Confirmation for a Modest Realism.
In the nineteenth century, William Whewell claimed that his confirmation criterion of consilience was a truth-guarantor: we could, he believed, be certain that a consilient theory was true. Since that time Whewell has been much ridiculed for this claim by critics such as J. S. Mill and Bas van Fraas...
| Publicado en: | Philosophy of Science Vol. 72; no. 5; pp. 839 - 850 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Cambridge University Press
Dec2005
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=24277102&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 24277102 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00318248 PSC jtl: Philosophy of Science issn: 00318248 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2005 vid: 72 iid: 5 pid: 15979 pub: Cambridge University Press artinfo: ui: 24277102 10.1086/508114 ppf: 839 ppct: 11 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 105KB tig: atl: Confirmation for a Modest Realism. aug: au: Snyder, Laura J. affil: Department of Philosophy, St. John's University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, NY 11439 su: Realism Confirmation (Logic) Criterion (Theory of knowledge) Truth Whewell, William, 1794-1866 Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873 Van Fraassen, Bas C., 1941- sug: subj: Realism Confirmation (Logic) Criterion (Theory of knowledge) Truth Whewell, William, 1794-1866 Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873 Van Fraassen, Bas C., 1941- ab: In the nineteenth century, William Whewell claimed that his confirmation criterion of consilience was a truth-guarantor: we could, he believed, be certain that a consilient theory was true. Since that time Whewell has been much ridiculed for this claim by critics such as J. S. Mill and Bas van Fraassen. I have argued elsewhere that, while Whewell's claim that consilience can guarantee the truth of a theory is clearly wrong, consilience is indeed quite useful as a confirmation criterion (Snyder 2005). Here I will show that, even when consilience gives evidence for a theory that turns out to be false, there is an important sense in which consilience shows that the theory has captured something correct about the natural-kind structure of the physical world. Whewell was therefore correct to claim that consilience provides a "criterion of reality" (Whewell [1847] 1967, vol. 2, 68). Consilience provides this by giving justification for the claim that we have really 'cut nature at its causal joints', to adapt Plato's famous phrase. Because of this, consilience can play a role in an argument for scientific realism. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Philosophy of Science is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Philosophy of Science holder: Cambridge University Press dt: @attributes: year: 2005 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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